Speaker 1: Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2: When we left off last week, it was April twenty first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty a US Army paratrooper Ethan Melzer was having
Speaker 2: his first chat with the administrator of a telegram channel
Speaker 2: for a group called rape Waffen, a splinter cell from
Speaker 2: the Nazi terror organization Adam Woffen who was committed to
Speaker 2: the Satanic cult called the Order of Nine Angles. Melzer
Speaker 2: didn't know it at the time, but the user he
Speaker 2: was chatting with was a psychologically unstable fifteen year old
Speaker 2: in Canada, and it seems unlikely that either of them
Speaker 2: had any idea that the teenager's online girlfriend was a
Speaker 2: government informant. Over the course of the next five weeks,
Speaker 2: Ethan Melzer developed a plan that he hoped would result
Speaker 2: in the murder of forty of his fellow soldiers and
Speaker 2: hopefully provoke a conflict in the Middle East that would
Speaker 2: claim thousands more lives. I'm Molly Konger. This is weird,
Speaker 2: little guys. Just a quick note at the top. I
Speaker 2: do want to start off with a correction today. When
Speaker 2: we were talking last week about the Hitler based dating
Speaker 2: system used by the Satanic Nazi cult, I foolishly repeated
Speaker 2: a claim that I'd read that the origin of feyan
Speaker 2: was unknown, and that's on me. I should have double
Speaker 2: check for myself. The order of nine angles marks the
Speaker 2: passage of time in years since the birth of Hitler,
Speaker 2: so twenty twenty four would be the year one thirty five,
Speaker 2: and they write that date out as y F one
Speaker 2: three five, where y F stands for a year of faeyan.
Speaker 2: I did a little more digging around because I just
Speaker 2: couldn't accept the explanation that there is no explanation.
Speaker 1: And of course, fayan.
Speaker 2: Spelled fay e n is almost certainly derived from a
Speaker 2: Middle English word faine fay n, an adverb meaning gladly
Speaker 2: or joyfully, which in turn comes from the Old English gaffeon,
Speaker 2: meaning to rejoice. So the Nazi wizards are at least
Speaker 2: etymologically on track in their choice to refer to the
Speaker 2: year since Hitler's birth as the year of rejoicing. You
Speaker 2: don't got a hand it to him, but I had
Speaker 2: to correct the record on that anyway. Back to the
Speaker 2: foiled terror plot. Ethan Melzer was taken into custody on
Speaker 2: May thirtieth, twenty twenty, when military authorities detained him He
Speaker 2: was standing outside at Camp Betterly, part of a joint
Speaker 2: Italian American military complex in Vicenza, Italy, with three dozen
Speaker 2: of his fellow soldiers. They were waiting for the bus
Speaker 2: that would take them to the air Stone, where they
Speaker 2: would board a flight to Turkey. His platoon had been
Speaker 2: assigned to a sensitive mission at in Serlic Air Base,
Speaker 2: a Turkish air base near the Syrian border and one
Speaker 2: of a handful of foreign bases where the US military
Speaker 2: is known to store B sixty one nuclear bombs. His
Speaker 2: platoon had spent the last few weeks receiving classified briefings
Speaker 2: on their upcoming mission. They trained, drilled, and studied terrain maps.
Speaker 2: They sat through a training about possible threat scenarios they
Speaker 2: could encounter on their mission and how to spot them,
Speaker 2: none of them knowing that the threat was there in
Speaker 2: the room, because all the while Ethan Melzer was passing
Speaker 2: every piece of information he learned on to his new
Speaker 2: friends in the order of nine angles, every detail about
Speaker 2: the mission, down to photos he clandestinely took of the
Speaker 2: maps shown in the briefing was shared immediately with rape Waffen.
Speaker 2: His platoon had originally been scheduled to deploy two days earlier,
Speaker 2: on May twenty eighth. The soldiers standing there with their
Speaker 2: packed bags waiting for the bus hadn't been told why
Speaker 2: their departure date had been pushed back, but they were worried.
Speaker 2: It meant something serious was going on. None of them
Speaker 2: could have guessed, though, that it was one of their
Speaker 2: own who meant them harm. But that is the end,
Speaker 2: and I said we were going to start at the beginning.
Speaker 2: Ethan Melzer was born in nineteen ninety eight to parents
Speaker 2: who only married because his mother got pregnant. The marriage
Speaker 2: didn't last. His father's mother seems to blame Ethan's mother
Speaker 2: for this, and they weren't good with money. His father,
Speaker 2: Nick Melzer, bought a house the couple couldn't afford, and
Speaker 2: they filed for bankruptcy in two thousand and two, the
Speaker 2: same year their marriage ended. His father traveled a lot
Speaker 2: for work, so Ethan lived with his mother by her
Speaker 2: own admission. Ethan's mother, Julie, suffered from alcoholism and a
Speaker 2: variety of mental illnesses, though she didn't get diagnosed until
Speaker 2: after her son's arrest, and judging by the court filings,
Speaker 2: one thing everyone agree on is that his mother, Julie
Speaker 2: struggled to provide a safe and stable home environment for Ethan.
Speaker 2: She drank too much, She dated terrible men. She came
Speaker 2: from a family of proud clansmen and dated men who
Speaker 2: used racial slurs. She had a boyfriend who beat her
Speaker 2: and her son. That same boyfriend had an older son
Speaker 2: who allegedly sexually abused Ethan when he was still in
Speaker 2: elementary school. Ethan's father remarried when he was nine, and
Speaker 2: his new stepmother resented him. When his step siblings were born,
Speaker 2: he saw even less of his father. There was no
Speaker 2: room for this strange boy from her husband's previous marriage
Speaker 2: and his stepmother's new family. When Ethan was in middle school,
Speaker 2: his mother's parents died. This sent her into a deep
Speaker 2: depression and her drinking got worse. And this left a
Speaker 2: troubled young boy mostly on his own. He spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time online. He got really into four chan.
Speaker 2: He started smoking.
Speaker 1: Pot in the eighth grade, and.
Speaker 2: His mother didn't seem to notice or care when he
Speaker 2: skipped school to stay home and play video games and
Speaker 2: get high, and she would sometimes even smoke pot with him.
Speaker 2: The psychologist hired by his lawyers prepared a report that
Speaker 2: expounds at length about this difficult period in Ethan's young life.
Speaker 2: He was overweighted and unathletic. Who's uncool, Who's bullied? He
Speaker 2: was starting to realize that he was gay, and that
Speaker 2: terrified him. He liked art and music, not sports. The
Speaker 2: men in his mother's life bullied him, the kids at
Speaker 2: school bullied him, and he retreated deeper and deeper into
Speaker 2: the Internet and into drugs. By his sophomore year of
Speaker 2: high school, he was using ecstasy and meth. I think
Speaker 2: it's important to note that none of this excuses anything.
Speaker 2: It barely even explains it. I know plenty of wonderful
Speaker 2: people who were fat gay nerds in middle school. I've
Speaker 2: come to think of it. I know a lot of
Speaker 2: really great adults who would tell you today and that
Speaker 2: they are proud and happy to be fat gay nerds.
Speaker 2: It's a great kind of person to be. But there's
Speaker 2: no denying that it's a difficult state of affairs for
Speaker 2: a middle schooler whose stepmother hates him and whose mom
Speaker 2: cares more about getting drunk than making sure he gets
Speaker 2: to school on time. That alone doesn't create a monster,
Speaker 2: but you can, I think, find a place in your
Speaker 2: heart to feel sorry for this little boy. It doesn't
Speaker 2: mean you have to feel sorry for the man he became,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't change what he did. But there was
Speaker 2: a time when he could have been someone different. There
Speaker 2: were days years ago when a little boy who wanted
Speaker 2: to be loved and accepted and nurtured didn't get that.
Speaker 2: It's okay to mourn the man who never was because
Speaker 2: that sad boy went down the wrong path. He dropped
Speaker 2: out of high school at the end of tenth grade,
Speaker 2: which would have been in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: I think in.
Speaker 2: Twenty sixteen is the date he gives for his earliest
Speaker 2: criminal activity. This was also the year his mother remarried.
Speaker 2: His mother describes this new husband as physically abusive, just
Speaker 2: as her earlier boyfriends had been, and recounted an incident
Speaker 2: in which he choked her until she lost consciousness. She
Speaker 2: says her husband would also punch Ethan, and in one
Speaker 2: notable incident, she says he punched Ethan repeatedly as he
Speaker 2: lay on the couch trying to cover his face. So
Speaker 2: Ethan moved out. He moved from flophouse to flophouse and
Speaker 2: started dealing drugs. He shot another drug dealer. That shooting
Speaker 2: the when we talked about a bit in the first
Speaker 2: episode does seem well corroborated. I think it really did happen.
Speaker 2: But there's also some mention of a possible earlier shooting,
Speaker 2: an incident where he shot someone during an attempted mugging.
Speaker 2: It's unclear if that when it is corroborated or not,
Speaker 2: but according to the psychologist, it was after that second shooting,
Speaker 2: the one we know was real, when he realized his
Speaker 2: life was falling apart. So he got off drugs, moved
Speaker 2: back into his mom's house, got a steady job at
Speaker 2: a restaurant, and started thinking about getting his ged. His
Speaker 2: manager at the restaurant recommended the Job Corps, a program
Speaker 2: administered by the Department of Labor that provides educational opportunities
Speaker 2: and job training for low income young adults. In September
Speaker 2: of twenty eighteen, at twenty years old, Ethan Melzer enrolled
Speaker 2: in the Job Core program. His time in the Job
Speaker 2: Core Program is marked by intense contradiction. He was praised
Speaker 2: for his positive attitude and his hard work. He was
Speaker 2: enthusiastic about joining the military because of his overwhelming patriotism
Speaker 2: and respect for family members who had served, but He
Speaker 2: was also ravenously consuming texts produced by the Order Nine Angles,
Speaker 2: the Satanic Nazi cult he would soon initiate himself into.
Speaker 2: In an interview after Ethan's arrest, his Job Core career
Speaker 2: counselor said.
Speaker 3: Neo Nazis and white supremacists don't last a week here.
Speaker 3: There is no way a kid who has those ideas
Speaker 3: can hide their true colors when they are surrounded by
Speaker 3: black people and I hear everything that goes on in
Speaker 3: the dorms. Ethan showed no signs at all of being
Speaker 3: a white supremacist.
Speaker 2: Another Job Corp employee who worked with Ethan during his
Speaker 2: time in the program said, the kids who come in
Speaker 2: with those ideas never last long. They do come, but
Speaker 2: they get into conflicts and they always leave. Another of
Speaker 2: Ethan's instructors in the program said, if.
Speaker 3: You are a white supremacist, you won't make it here.
Speaker 3: Job Corps has a zero tolerance policy. We've had kids
Speaker 3: like that before and they only last a few days.
Speaker 3: We know everything that goes on in the dorms we
Speaker 3: have had. I had racist and anti American kids here
Speaker 3: and they never make it. They can't hide it. We
Speaker 3: always find.
Speaker 2: Out they can always tell they always root those kids out.
Speaker 2: Ethan was a model student. He showed no signs of
Speaker 2: racism or anti Semitism. He was friendly and helpful, and
Speaker 2: he got top marks on his evaluations in the category
Speaker 2: of multicultural awareness. He was patriotic and looking forward to
Speaker 2: serving his country. They can always tell, except he was
Speaker 2: lying to everyone. It was during his time in the
Speaker 2: job Corp program that he fell down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: He started researching the Order of Nine Angles. He liked
Speaker 2: what he saw. He downloaded the literature he would need
Speaker 2: to self initiate. He was in contact with other members.
Speaker 2: He was on his way to starting his own nexsion
Speaker 2: before he finished the In December of twenty nineteen, just
Speaker 2: three months into his nine months at job Corps, he
Speaker 2: signed the paperwork to enlist.
Speaker 1: In the Army.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't head off to basic training until the following
Speaker 2: June after completing his ged, but he knew what he
Speaker 2: wanted to do afterwards, and he signed the documents committing
Speaker 2: to it. In February of twenty nineteen, he created an
Speaker 2: account on Discord, a messaging application originally favored mostly by
Speaker 2: gamers as dagger Light. He joined a Discord server for
Speaker 2: people interested in conspiracy theories and the occult. The court
Speaker 2: filings don't say exactly which one, but I have a guess.
Speaker 2: The nonprofit investigative journalism collective Unicorn Riot has an extensive
Speaker 2: database of leaked discord chats. Most famously, they published the
Speaker 2: entire planning chat where the Unite the Right rally. But
Speaker 2: in the years since, this vault of leaked servers has
Speaker 2: grown exponentially. Obviously, it's not every extremist discord server, so
Speaker 2: we're really only looking at a sliver of what's out there.
Speaker 2: But I did find an account I know to be
Speaker 2: Ethan Melzer's in a discord server where most of the
Speaker 2: discussion is about Flatter Earth, anti vax conspiracies, nine to
Speaker 2: eleven trutherism. Things like that the excerpted messages contained in
Speaker 2: the court documents aren't there in the unicorn Riot leaks.
Speaker 2: Those messages may have been shared in private channels or
Speaker 2: deleted sometime before the discord was archived and published, or
Speaker 2: maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree entirely, several of
Speaker 2: the usernames that are visible in the government exhibits do
Speaker 2: appear within this discord server, though, so even if it
Speaker 2: wasn't this one in particular, it was one that shared
Speaker 2: a lot of the same ideas and the same users.
Speaker 1: Either way.
Speaker 2: Ethan got on Discord in February of twenty nineteen and
Speaker 2: he posted, Hello, I have some questions about a group
Speaker 2: I found. Don't know if you walk help. The group
Speaker 2: he was asking about was Temple of Blood. Temple of
Speaker 2: Blood is maybe the most prominent North American nexxion of
Speaker 2: the Order of Nine Angles, and it is the nexion
Speaker 2: that is mixed up with Adam Woffin during this time period.
Speaker 2: I would be remiss if I did not also tell
Speaker 2: you that the founder of the Temple of Blood, Joshua
Speaker 2: Caleb Sutter, has been on the FBI payroll for more
Speaker 2: than twenty years, and that certainly complicates the story a
Speaker 2: little bit. Sutter came up in the Aryan Nations. He
Speaker 2: is a longtime member of the movement. His relationship with
Speaker 2: the FBI began in two thousand and three, when he
Speaker 2: agreed to cooperate with the authorities after he got caught
Speaker 2: up on a gun charge. In an article for Wired
Speaker 2: earlier this year, Ali Winston and Jake Hanrahan spoke to
Speaker 2: Harvard law professor Alexander Natopov about this kind of arrangement,
Speaker 2: which she calls a deal with the devil. You can't
Speaker 2: get from A to B without an informant, she said.
Speaker 2: Sometimes to get close to criminals, you have to rely
Speaker 2: on criminals. The FBI has refused to answer questions or
Speaker 2: even comment on their relationship with Sutter, but the truth
Speaker 2: finally came out during the trial of Caleb Cole, one
Speaker 2: of the Adamwoffin members, who was arrested in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Ali Winston's most recent investigation into this story indicates that
Speaker 2: Sutter may have been involved with the Order of Nine
Speaker 2: Angles for years before becoming a paid government informant. So
Speaker 2: it might be disingenuous to say that Temple of Blood
Speaker 2: only exists because the government was paying the guy who
Speaker 2: ran it. He may well have started his own nexxion
Speaker 2: with or without the one hundred and forty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: he's been paid by the FBI. But maybe he wouldn't
Speaker 2: have been allowed to operate with such impunity. Maybe he
Speaker 2: wouldn't have had the resources to start and run. Martinette Press,
Speaker 2: the publishing house that produced most of the ona materials
Speaker 2: available in the United States today, Maybe his influence would
Speaker 2: have been curtailed years and years ago before he could
Speaker 2: propagate his violent, pedophilic ideology, sewing it into the minds
Speaker 2: of young men who would kill for it. I think
Speaker 2: one thing a lot of people get wrong when they
Speaker 2: talk about paid informants like Sutter is a belief that
Speaker 2: people like Sutter aren't sincere in their beliefs or actions,
Speaker 2: and that they wouldn't be engaging in these things if
Speaker 2: not for the inducement of the federal government. But the
Speaker 2: movement is littered with true believers who make a little
Speaker 2: money on the side snitching on people they don't like.
Speaker 2: Plenty of them think they're clever enough to benefit from
Speaker 2: the enragement. They think they can advance their own position
Speaker 2: in the movement by having the state take out their rivals,
Speaker 2: or they think they can curry favor with the authorities
Speaker 2: by dropping a few tidbits of information here and there.
Speaker 2: Just because he's getting paid to do it doesn't mean
Speaker 2: he wouldn't be doing it otherwise, or that he doesn't
Speaker 2: believe it. Sutter's lengthy career as a government informant, the
Speaker 2: amount of blood in his wake, and the number of
Speaker 2: zeros on his checks certainly make him an outlier, though
Speaker 2: while admit so, I had to tell you that that's
Speaker 2: unavoidable under the pseudonym Swiss discipline. Sutter was the one
Speaker 2: who was really pushing the satanic ideology of the Order
Speaker 2: of Nine Angles to the forefront of Adam Woffin in
Speaker 2: the year after Brandon Russell's arrest. There's no denying that
Speaker 2: did he do it because the government asked him to,
Speaker 2: because he sincerely believed in the things he was saying?
Speaker 2: Both neither it's impossible to know, and neither Sutter nor
Speaker 2: the government are talking about it. Honestly, I think it
Speaker 2: would be naive to believe either of them, even if
Speaker 2: they did. Been some rumblings within the movement that the
Speaker 2: whole idea is a government operation. Sometimes that looks like
Speaker 2: a sort of no true Scotsman's situation.
Speaker 1: For Neo Nazis.
Speaker 2: You know, anyone in the movement who's talking like this
Speaker 2: is clearly a government operative trying to make us all
Speaker 2: look crazy. Another theory I've seen is a little intriguing,
Speaker 2: if convoluted and very unlikely. But there are those within
Speaker 2: the movement who believe that the government's interest in pushing
Speaker 2: Satanism on them is a strategy aimed at getting them
Speaker 2: to disengage. If someone is falling deeper and deeper into
Speaker 2: extremist ideology and suddenly they're expected to sacrifice a goat
Speaker 2: and drink its blood under the moonlight, they might say,
Speaker 2: you know what, fuck it. This is too weird, this
Speaker 2: is too weird.
Speaker 1: I can't do it.
Speaker 2: The idea here is that the goal isn't to deradicalize them,
Speaker 2: it's to push radicalization to its most extreme limits, making
Speaker 2: it unpalatable, making the movement just too damn weird to
Speaker 2: keep up with. Like I said, that's a little convoluted.
Speaker 2: I don't know that the government is playing that kind
Speaker 2: of three dimensional chess with Nazis, but it is a
Speaker 2: theory I've seen pushed around a little bit. But Joshua
Speaker 2: Caleb Sutter's story is a long and strange one all
Speaker 2: on its own, and I'm actually saving it until I
Speaker 2: get to a weird little guy I've been fascinated by
Speaker 2: for years. You see, we didn't find out that Sutter
Speaker 2: was an FBI informant until pretty recently, but a fellow
Speaker 2: white nationalist who'd known him for decades had been pointing
Speaker 2: the finger at Sutter for years. Bill White is almost
Speaker 2: certainly the most prolific jailhouse lawyer in the white supremacist movement.
Speaker 2: I've spent oh god, probably close to one thousand dollar
Speaker 2: paying ten cents a page over the last five years
Speaker 2: or so buying copies of his ranting and raving court filings.
Speaker 2: He's got a wide variety of grievances and conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: Most of his recent complaints are about unfair treatment inside
Speaker 2: assorted federal prison facilities. The guards are mean to him,
Speaker 2: he was framed for a fight he claims another inmate started,
Speaker 2: he isn't getting adequate treatment for his mental health problems.
Speaker 1: And so on.
Speaker 2: But he's also been saying for years that he was
Speaker 2: framed for one of the things that sent him to prison.
Speaker 2: And central to that argument is his fervent belief that
Speaker 2: Joshua Caleb Sutter was working for the FBI. So when
Speaker 2: it turned out he'd been right about Sutter all along,
Speaker 2: I was stunned. I'm not saying I believe Bill when
Speaker 2: he says he didn't send those emails threatening to kill
Speaker 2: a prosecutor's wife, but it's intriguing that he was right
Speaker 2: about any at all. But I think it'll be a
Speaker 2: minute before we get to my favorite vexatious litigant in
Speaker 2: the federal prison system, so i'll leave it there. He's
Speaker 2: not getting out until twenty thirty seven, so I've got
Speaker 2: plenty of time.
Speaker 1: The ratings of an incarcerated Nazi.
Speaker 2: Aside, no one knew Joshua Caleb Sutter was an FBI
Speaker 2: informant until twenty twenty one, so Ethan Melser certainly didn't
Speaker 2: have any inkling about it when he started asking about
Speaker 2: Temple of Blood in February of twenty nineteen. In the discord,
Speaker 2: he says he encountered the group in a Reddit post
Speaker 2: and started looking into it. He says another Reddit user
Speaker 2: told him it was connected to some shit called nine A,
Speaker 2: and in the discord he says it's just morbid curiosity
Speaker 2: that he's always been interested in really obscure shit. After
Speaker 2: a bit of back and forth with the other users,
Speaker 2: he finally says, so they're Nazi vampires. Okay then, and
Speaker 2: he asks if there are groups out there that are
Speaker 2: even more extreme. Another user asks him you want to
Speaker 2: go full throttle, and Ethan Melser replies yes. A few
Speaker 2: days later, in another discord server, he's asking again about
Speaker 2: the Order of Nine Angles. He is again told that
Speaker 2: they are a neo Nazi Satanic group with connections to
Speaker 2: Adam Woffen, and Ethan Melser posts, this is going to
Speaker 2: sound bad, but I want to go further down the
Speaker 2: rabbit hole. Say someone were to go all the way
Speaker 2: trying to look for these people. How bad of an
Speaker 2: idea is that? Like out of ten? A few days
Speaker 2: after expressing his desire to go down the Satanic rabbit hole,
Speaker 2: Ethan Melzer is having a private conversation with a member
Speaker 2: of the Order of Nine Angles, and he's asking for
Speaker 2: the text that he'll need to read to get started.
Speaker 2: Within weeks, he had accumulated a large collection of PDFs
Speaker 2: and books about the Order of Nine Angles. He was
Speaker 2: communicating regularly with at least two members. He got a
Speaker 2: tattoo on his left forearm of an eight pointed star,
Speaker 2: often referred to as the symbol of chaos. He was
Speaker 2: already deep into his new magical practice before he finished
Speaker 2: the job Corp program. Just a few weeks before he
Speaker 2: showed up for basic training, another user in the discord
Speaker 2: server warned him to be careful.
Speaker 3: Not to dissuade you, but you're kind of playing with
Speaker 3: fire dagger. The Uniform Code of Military Justice has a
Speaker 3: few things to say about members of the armed forces
Speaker 3: holding affiliations with extremist groups. For thee, he thought, if
Speaker 3: you're serious about being initiated or whatever.
Speaker 2: He responded by asking if the army could search his phone.
Speaker 2: Upon finding out that that very likely could happen, he
Speaker 2: said he'd just delete everything before he got there. In
Speaker 2: his last few weeks before his official enlistment date, he
Speaker 2: was trying to convince other members of the Discord to
Speaker 2: form an nexsion with him, and was coming up with
Speaker 2: vetting procedures for members of his nexion. He suggested that
Speaker 2: the group's motto should be total aryan victory. In June,
Speaker 2: he joined another Discord server, this one devoted to discussion
Speaker 2: of esoteric Nazism.
Speaker 1: Some Discord servers.
Speaker 2: Allow users to assign little labels to their account, visible
Speaker 2: to other users next to their name. In this server,
Speaker 2: Melzer selected the user labels Satanism and fascism to describe himself.
Speaker 2: Another user asked if he really believed in both, and
Speaker 2: he replied quickly yes, and then backtracked, saying not really
Speaker 2: just fascism, and claimed he was only joking about Satanism.
Speaker 2: In another server, someone asked him if he had already
Speaker 2: initiated into the Order of Nine Angles. He said no,
Speaker 2: but in another chat that same afternoon he had been
Speaker 2: discussing the fact that if asked, ona initiates were supposed
Speaker 2: to deny it. It is interesting to note that the
Speaker 2: second leaked discord server I found Melzer in was one
Speaker 2: mainly used to chat about esoteric Nazism, and it is
Speaker 2: also one in which Shanton Simpson appears. I couldn't find
Speaker 2: any evidence that Melser and Simpson ever interacted there on
Speaker 2: this discord server, but it looks like their paths may
Speaker 2: have crossed here before Melzer made the jump from discord
Speaker 2: servers about the occult into telegram chats for terrorism, and
Speaker 2: they found themselves together once again in rape Waffen. When
Speaker 2: he reported to Fort Benning and Georgia on June fourth,
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, Ethan Melzer signed a statement of enlistment affirming
Speaker 2: that he was not involved in any extremist groups or activities.
Speaker 2: He was, in fact, almost certainly already self initiated into
Speaker 2: the Order of nine Angles and was demonstrably very interested
Speaker 2: in forming or joining a terrorist organization. After completing basic
Speaker 2: training and airborne school, Ethan Melzer deployed with the one
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy third Airborne Division to a base in Italy.
Speaker 2: In his discord chats, he complained that he needed to
Speaker 2: get some kind of fake book covers so that he
Speaker 2: could read his sinister texts in front of his commanding
Speaker 2: officer without drawing suspicion. He expressed a longing for the
Speaker 2: day of the Rope, a phrase from the Turner Diaries
Speaker 2: that refers to the day the race War really begins,
Speaker 2: when the race traders are murdered, unmasks and left hanging
Speaker 2: from lamp posts and bridges. When another user complained that
Speaker 2: it felt like the race war would never come, he replied.
Speaker 3: I'm working on it. Okay, give me three years and
Speaker 3: I got you, motherfucker. I'm in the Army specifically for this.
Speaker 3: I mean I literally did join for this exact reason.
Speaker 3: Can't really do anything when I'm in fucking Italy. My
Speaker 3: unit is stationed in Italy.
Speaker 2: I'm in the Army specifically for this, That's what he said.
Speaker 2: Ethan Melzer joined the Army as an insight role. The
Speaker 2: insight role is a core tenet of the Order of
Speaker 2: Nine Angles. You can think of it as a sort
Speaker 2: of evil magical undercover assignment. A members should take on
Speaker 2: this role for six to eighteen months, depending on the
Speaker 2: texture looking at and the nature and purpose of the
Speaker 2: insight role has shifted a little bit over time and
Speaker 2: on the source text. At it's most innocuous, it's just
Speaker 2: that same left hand path magical notion of doing something transgressive. Right,
Speaker 2: you should do something antithetical to yourself to deepen your
Speaker 2: practice of magic, to truly test your sinister resolve, you
Speaker 2: should pick a lifestyle a role that is as close
Speaker 2: to the polar opposite of your own life, your own
Speaker 2: true nature as possible. You should be the opposite of
Speaker 2: yourself for a year. But the insight role is widely
Speaker 2: understood to be something a bit darker than a little
Speaker 2: Antinomian role playing game. Your insight role should allow you
Speaker 2: to infiltrate and ultimately subvert some kind of institution. Religious orders,
Speaker 2: police departments, and the military are commonly suggested for this purpose,
Speaker 2: particularly when it comes to insight roles in policing or
Speaker 2: the military. This also provides an opportunity to gain training
Speaker 2: and access to weapons. It can also provide a suitable
Speaker 2: environment for the practice of culling. That's human sacrifice. These
Speaker 2: are jobs where you may well have the opportunity to kill,
Speaker 2: and that's what he's referring to. In the months before
Speaker 2: he reported for active duty, Ethan Melzer rapidly became obsessed
Speaker 2: with and then initiated himself into the Order of Nine Angles.
Speaker 2: He may not have formed the plan before he told
Speaker 2: his career counselor that he wanted to enlist, but by
Speaker 2: the time he put on the uniform for the first time,
Speaker 2: he was only pretending to be a soldier. This was
Speaker 2: an insight role. By April of twenty twenty, when Ethan
Speaker 2: Melzer was joining rape Waffen, he'd been studying the Order
Speaker 2: of Nine Angles for more than a year. In one
Speaker 2: way early discussion with another Rapewaffen member, he said he
Speaker 2: needed to be careful because he didn't want to end
Speaker 2: up like another guy in their circle who got caught
Speaker 2: while he was in the military.
Speaker 1: There are so many.
Speaker 2: Guys that that could refer to that I can't actually
Speaker 2: pin down who he might have meant just looking at
Speaker 2: guys who have some sort of crossover. You know, Adam
Speaker 2: Waffen Order of Nine Angles, were in the military, got
Speaker 2: in trouble in twenty nineteen or so. That's actually a
Speaker 2: surprisingly long list of guys. He may have been referring
Speaker 2: to Army private Corwin Storm Carver, who was investigated in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen over allegations that he was the current leader
Speaker 2: of Adam Woffin and was involved in the Order of
Speaker 2: Nine Angles. Or maybe he meant Jarrett Smith, the Adam
Speaker 2: Woffin member, Satanist and infantry soldier arrested in twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: for distributing information about bomb making. Maybe he was talking
Speaker 2: about Kyle Bent, the U. S. Army specialist who was
Speaker 2: discharged in twenty nineteen after he was arrested for domestic
Speaker 2: violence and the subsequent army investigation revealed that he too
Speaker 2: was involved with the Order of Nine Angles. Or maybe
Speaker 2: he was talking about Vasilio's Pastolis, the Marine lance corporal
Speaker 2: who was court martialed in twenty eighteen over his ties
Speaker 2: to Adam Woffin. There are plenty of possibilities here, and
Speaker 2: they all point to the same grim reality. As Corwin
Speaker 2: Carver said, soldiers make the best Nazis. It's just a fact,
Speaker 2: and that's a fact. Ethan Melzer was well aware of.
Speaker 2: The same week he's having this conversation about not wanting
Speaker 2: to be another guy in the military caught doing what
Speaker 2: he's doing, he advised another member of rape Waffen who
Speaker 2: was considering joining the military to do it for the training, saying,
Speaker 2: the ridiculous forced patriotism bullshit can go fuck itself. Just
Speaker 2: play the game for four years and get the fuck out,
Speaker 2: but stronger, smarter, and more dangerous.
Speaker 1: Of course, he gave the.
Speaker 2: Same advice a few days later to a rape Woffen
Speaker 2: member who called himself Frycorps and was considering joining the Marines.
Speaker 2: Those early months of twenty twenty were a lifetime ago,
Speaker 2: so maybe you don't remember the specifics, but the COVID
Speaker 2: nineteen pandemic hit Italy pretty hard. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: a pandemic.
Speaker 1: It hit us all pretty hard.
Speaker 2: But Italy had actual lockdowns, and so did the US military.
Speaker 2: And so in those early months of the pandemic, stationed
Speaker 2: in Italy, Ethan Melzer was more or less confined to
Speaker 2: his barracks, and he used that time to really commit
Speaker 2: to reading his sinister texts and to work his way
Speaker 2: deeper into the online subculture surrounding it. Photos recovered from
Speaker 2: his cell phone include one of Melzer wearing a ski
Speaker 2: mask and holding up a copy of a book has
Speaker 2: cut himself and smeared his own blood over a sigil
Speaker 2: on the page.
Speaker 1: The book is opened to.
Speaker 2: If I had to guess based on the picture, I
Speaker 2: think that's a copy of Keleethi, the second of three
Speaker 2: parts of an Ona text called the Black Book of Satan.
Speaker 2: It looks like the copy he has as the fully
Speaker 2: illustrated version with drawings by Christos Beast, an English musician
Speaker 2: named Richard Molt who was allegedly a member of Ona's
Speaker 2: Old Guard. With David Mayat and alone in his barracks,
Speaker 2: Melzer consumed the violent gore videos that were shared so
Speaker 2: gleefully in those telegram channels. Found in his digital possession
Speaker 2: were things like a video that appears to show a
Speaker 2: black woman being lynched by a white man in front
Speaker 2: of a Confederate flag, and a photo of a woman
Speaker 2: who is bound and hooded being held at gunpoint by
Speaker 2: a man standing in front of a flag with the
Speaker 2: insignia for the Order of nine Angles. The court record
Speaker 2: specifically notes several videos he'd watched depicting jihadist attacks on
Speaker 2: US military forces, which may be where he got his
Speaker 2: next big idea. Immediately after walking out of the briefing
Speaker 2: room for his upcoming mission to Turkey, Melzer shared the
Speaker 2: information with Rapewaffen Chat. Soon after, the channel administrator, our
Speaker 2: Canadian teenager posting as Gulag Cult, asked him for more
Speaker 2: information about the deployment because another Rapewaffen member, a user
Speaker 2: called Kurt Kobani, needed to know. Gulag Cult told Melzer
Speaker 2: that this other user, we'll just call him Kurt I Guess,
Speaker 2: was a member of the Gray Wolves, a Turkish ultnationalist
Speaker 2: fascist paramilitary group that the European Parliament considers an international
Speaker 2: terrorist organization. A week before he was scheduled to deploy,
Speaker 2: Melzer posted in at least two telegram chats for adherents
Speaker 2: of the Order of Nine Angles that he was a
Speaker 2: US Army soldier stationed in Italy and he was about
Speaker 2: to deploy to Turkey. Gulag Cult forwarded several of Melzer's messages,
Speaker 2: which contained sensitive details about the mission, to a chat
Speaker 2: called the Order of Nine Rapes. That chat had just
Speaker 2: eighteen members. One of those members was Ethan Melzer, one
Speaker 2: was Gulug cult Our, fifteen year old Canadian, and one
Speaker 2: was a user who called herself Red hour Glass, and
Speaker 2: Red hour Glass would be the one to pull the
Speaker 2: plug on the whole operation by reporting the plot to
Speaker 2: the FBI. The FBI didn't arrest their own informant, and
Speaker 2: they can't arrest a Canadian child. But you do have
Speaker 2: to wonder what came of the other fifteen members of
Speaker 2: that chat room. Not much as known about Red hour Glass.
Speaker 1: She may not even be a woman at all.
Speaker 2: Who knows line she was Gulag Colt's girlfriend, Whether she
Speaker 2: knew her internet boyfriend was really a child, we don't know.
Speaker 2: She's referred to in the government's documents as a confidential source,
Speaker 2: not an undercover employee, so she may be getting paid
Speaker 2: by the FBI for the information she provides, but she
Speaker 2: is not an FBI agent. One footnote indicates that she's
Speaker 2: only been a source for the government since May of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, which is when all of this went down.
Speaker 2: They don't give a more specific date than that, just
Speaker 2: May of twenty twenty, So was she already a government
Speaker 2: informant when she entered the Order of Nine rapes Chat
Speaker 2: where this plan was hatched. Or did she only become
Speaker 2: a government informant after the plan took shape and maybe
Speaker 2: she felt compelled to report it. We can't know, but
Speaker 2: her username is interesting.
Speaker 1: To me, red hour glass.
Speaker 2: Maybe that means something else to you, but to me,
Speaker 2: a red hour glass is a clear reference to the
Speaker 2: markings on the abdomen of a black widow spider. I
Speaker 2: don't want to draw the ire of any spider scientists
Speaker 2: out there. I understand that the commonly held belief that
Speaker 2: black widow spiders engage in sexual cannibalism isn't really supported
Speaker 2: by the science. Those instances of female black widows devouring
Speaker 2: their mates occur primarily in laboratory environments when the male
Speaker 2: spider can't get away, but it is nevertheless something people believe.
Speaker 2: So this red hour glass, this mysterious woman, is tricking
Speaker 2: Gulag cult into thinking they are romantically involved. She's drawing
Speaker 2: these young men into her web. Was she a black
Speaker 2: widow bent on consuming these men's futures?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Within the Order of Nine rapes Chat, a plan began
Speaker 2: to form. If they could get the information about this
Speaker 2: mission into the hands of al Qaeda, they could cause
Speaker 2: a mass casualty incident. One user asked Melzer if he
Speaker 2: understood that he too would likely die in the kind
Speaker 2: of attack they're talking about. Melzer replied, if we were
Speaker 2: to trigger this the right way, the amount of shit
Speaker 2: it would cause would cover it. He felt like his
Speaker 2: life quote would be absolutely meaningless in the amount of
Speaker 2: shit it would cause if the plan worked, if these
Speaker 2: forty soldiers were killed at a Turkish air base.
Speaker 1: A day later, Gurlug Cult.
Speaker 2: Asked him, are we really planning a Jihati attack, and
Speaker 2: Melzer agreed they were. Gulug Cult joked that if Melzer
Speaker 2: got himself shit in this attack would be his own fault,
Speaker 2: and Melzer again expressed a total willingness to die if
Speaker 2: it meant the plan was successful, saying, who gives a fuck?
Speaker 2: The after effects of a convoy getting attacked would cover it.
Speaker 2: It would be another war. I would have died successfully
Speaker 2: because another ten year war in the Middle East would
Speaker 2: definitely leave a mark. As the deployment date grew closer,
Speaker 2: Melzer shared every detail about the mission with Gulag Cult,
Speaker 2: the coordinates of the base, the number of US soldiers
Speaker 2: and what kind of weapons they were issued, the purpose
Speaker 2: and defensive capabilities of the U. S Army presence at
Speaker 2: this base, the layout of the installation and the surrounding terrain,
Speaker 2: and even the route his convoy would be taking to
Speaker 2: get there. He shared information he'd received in briefings and trainings,
Speaker 2: things like the fact that the base was home to
Speaker 2: many non military employees who are not armed, and that
Speaker 2: the Army was limited in the defenses available for this
Speaker 2: convoy because they were operating by the rules of the
Speaker 2: host government. Using the training he'd received about avoiding ambush
Speaker 2: style attacks, he explained in detail how an effective attack
Speaker 2: could work. Just days before the scheduled deployment, a new,
Speaker 2: even smaller chat room was formed to finalize the details.
Speaker 2: This one, called Operation hard Rock, was just four members, Melzer,
Speaker 2: our Canadian teenager, Gulag Cult, our government informant Read Hourglass,
Speaker 2: and a fourth user the government calls co Conspirator III,
Speaker 2: someone posting under the name Jaw with two ws. In
Speaker 2: this chat, Melzer promised to provide the group with the
Speaker 2: frequency and channels for the US Army radio communications so
Speaker 2: that they would be able to hear their victims deaths
Speaker 2: in real time. When the attack was carried out on
Speaker 2: May twenty fifth, the day before his twenty second birthday,
Speaker 2: Ethan Melzer may have gotten cold feet.
Speaker 1: He suggested to the.
Speaker 2: Chat that maybe they shouldn't attack his convoy at all.
Speaker 2: He still loved the idea of murdering a whole convoy
Speaker 2: of US soldiers. He just thought maybe it would be
Speaker 2: better for him to go on this deployment, spend a
Speaker 2: few months there researching the vulnerabilities of the place, you know,
Speaker 2: sending back more intel, and then they could carry out
Speaker 2: this attack on the unit sent to replace his a
Speaker 2: few months from now. He promised that he was packing
Speaker 2: a burner phone so he'd be able to provide them
Speaker 2: with photographs of the whole base once he got there,
Speaker 2: and then he didn't post for a few days. Red
Speaker 2: hour Glass informed the FBI of the plot the next day,
Speaker 2: May twenty six, twenty twenty, That was Ethan Melser's twenty
Speaker 2: second birthday and two days before the scheduled deployment date.
Speaker 1: The authorities were quickly able.
Speaker 2: To identify the platoon in question, and the deployment date
Speaker 2: was pushed back to May thirtieth. The soldiers weren't told why.
Speaker 2: Ethan Melzer had no idea his plans weren't a secret anymore.
Speaker 2: When he posted in the Operation hard Rock chat on
Speaker 2: May twenty ninth, the eve of the new scheduled departure date,
Speaker 2: he said he was still committed to the plan. He
Speaker 2: asked if it was possible to pull exact coordinates from
Speaker 2: the metadata on photos that were taken with a cell phone.
Speaker 2: He was hoping that if he was able to sneak
Speaker 2: his burner phone out on patrol and snap pictures, his
Speaker 2: co conspirators would be able to use the metadata to
Speaker 2: pinpoint the exact locations of the areas of vulnerability in
Speaker 2: the photos. Now, whether Red hour Glass was working for
Speaker 2: the government all along or not, we don't know. But
Speaker 2: on the evening of May twenty ninth, she may or
Speaker 2: may not have even been the one using her phone
Speaker 2: once she spilled the beans to the FBI. It may
Speaker 2: have been an actual FBI agent chatting with Ethan Melzer
Speaker 2: as Red Hourglass as he reaffirmed his commitment to the
Speaker 2: plan that night, Red Hourglass asked him, what makes you
Speaker 2: think you can actually get away with fucking with the
Speaker 2: US military and Melser replied, because I fly under the
Speaker 2: raidar already act completely normal around other people outside and
Speaker 2: don't talk about my personal life or beliefs with anyone.
Speaker 2: But he was starting to get nervous about the mission.
Speaker 2: He deleted most of his old posts. If the plan
Speaker 2: now was to attack the replacement convoy two months down
Speaker 2: the road, he was going to be alive when the
Speaker 2: investigation started, and he didn't want to get caught. Red
Speaker 2: Hourglass needled him, saying, you deleted them because that's treason duh,
Speaker 2: and he replied, KEK, that's k e K. It's a
Speaker 2: substitute for LOL. The lore here is complicated and irrelevant,
Speaker 2: but the short version is that keck originated with Korean
Speaker 2: online gamers as a typed indication that the user is laughing,
Speaker 2: and it eventually migrated into the American altright lexicon of
Speaker 2: the twenty sixteen era. It's not important. The point is
Speaker 2: he was laughing off what he knew to be true.
Speaker 2: This was treasonous behavior. And Nat gets us back up
Speaker 2: to where we started today. Ethan Melzer standing outside at
Speaker 2: Camp Betterly with his platoon on May thirtieth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: His bags were packed forty soldiers were waiting for the
Speaker 2: bus that would take them to the airstrip. Inside Ethan
Speaker 2: Melser's bag, they found two cell phones he really had
Speaker 2: packed the burner phone that he'd promised to use to
Speaker 2: take photographs of the military base. They also found two books,
Speaker 2: The Sinister Tradition, a seminal text for adherents of the
Speaker 2: Order of Nine Angles written by ONA Grandmaster Anton Long himself,
Speaker 2: and a copy of Kodux Aristarchus, one of the ONA
Speaker 2: texts authored by the English Nazi pedophile Ryan Fleming.
Speaker 1: I did give it a little skim this.
Speaker 2: Week, like I promised you last week, and it turns
Speaker 2: out he's just talking about psychic vampirism. Sorry, so I
Speaker 2: don't think vampires are real. Immediately after being taken into custody,
Speaker 2: Ethan Melzer admitted that he had disclosed information about his
Speaker 2: deployment to members of the rape Waffenchat. He admitted that
Speaker 2: he had done so in order to facilitate an attack
Speaker 2: on his fellow soldiers. He admitted that the messages had
Speaker 2: been typed and sent by him. He agreed that his
Speaker 2: actions were tantamount to treason, but as required by the
Speaker 2: rules of the Order of Nine Angles. He repeatedly denied
Speaker 2: that he was a member of the Order of Nine Angles.
Speaker 2: As the case progressed, his lawyers argued that he was
Speaker 2: just messing around online. He was addicted to posting. They
Speaker 2: wanted to have a psychologist testify about internet addiction and
Speaker 2: the phenomenon of people lying online for attention, inhabiting elaborate
Speaker 2: fake identities online because they're high on likes and comments.
Speaker 2: They argued that there was no actual chance of any
Speaker 2: real attack ever taking place, leaning heavily on the fact
Speaker 2: that the primary co conspirator was a child who had
Speaker 2: recently been released from a psychiatric facility and who was
Speaker 2: only pretending to be an adult with military training. The
Speaker 2: Defense sentencing memo doesn't mention that the government believes that
Speaker 2: co conspirators two and three.
Speaker 1: Were not lying.
Speaker 2: One of them really was based in Kurdistan, and the
Speaker 2: other does appear to have actual connections to some kind
Speaker 2: of jihadist organization. In his post arrest interviews, Melzer told
Speaker 2: investigators that he hadn't been serious about any of it,
Speaker 2: but that he'd felt pressured to provide information about the deployment,
Speaker 2: so he made something up and that kind of falls apart,
Speaker 2: considering the information he provided was real. He did provide actual,
Speaker 2: correct information about this military base in Turkey and his
Speaker 2: deployment to it, and he really did pack a burner
Speaker 2: phone for his deployment. But he said it had never
Speaker 2: even crossed his mind that the people he was talking
Speaker 2: to were serious, and he certainly wasn't serious. He said
Speaker 2: that he was only curious about the order of nine
Speaker 2: angles because it was so weird, and he claimed that
Speaker 2: the beliefs of the group were quote pretty much the
Speaker 2: polar opposite of his own, which is interesting because that's
Speaker 2: sort of the same language in a lot of ona
Speaker 2: texts about the kind of insight role you should choose.
Speaker 1: You should choose something that is.
Speaker 2: The polar opposite of your own beliefs. He later claimed
Speaker 2: that he'd only provided some information to the group in
Speaker 2: order to gain their trust so he could learn more
Speaker 2: about them, which is kind of what Shandon Simpson, that
Speaker 2: Ohio National guardsmen we were talking about last week, has
Speaker 2: been claiming all along about why he was in the
Speaker 2: rape wop and chat rooms. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: guys in the terrorism planning chat that are claiming after
Speaker 2: the fact that they were only pretending to support terrorism
Speaker 2: in order to uncover how bad everybody else.
Speaker 1: In there really is.
Speaker 2: And Knowlser's attorneys maintained all the way through sentencing that
Speaker 2: there was never any real possibility that anyone was going
Speaker 2: to get hurt. Right, they're saying that this plan is
Speaker 2: half baked at best, and it never would have actually worked.
Speaker 2: It was just posts online and the guy he was
Speaker 2: talking to turned out to be a kid anyway. But
Speaker 2: maybe terrorism is kind of like magic. Right. We were
Speaker 2: talking a little bit last week about how much does
Speaker 2: it matter what's real, what you really believe. Does it
Speaker 2: matter if you're actually communing with demonic entities and the
Speaker 2: acausal realm, if the end result is still a specific,
Speaker 2: concrete action in the real world. Does it matter if
Speaker 2: you didn't know the person you were sharing classified military
Speaker 2: intelligence with was a child, if that information still found
Speaker 2: its way onto the broader Internet, resulting in a very
Speaker 2: real to overhaul security protocols at a military base.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the law.
Speaker 2: Really is kind of like ritual magic in that way.
Speaker 2: You can catch the same charge for something like armed
Speaker 2: robbery whether the gun you were holding was real or not,
Speaker 2: because it doesn't matter if it's a real gun that
Speaker 2: shoots real bullets if the people you're pointing it at
Speaker 2: think it is Ethan Melzer entered into a plea agreement
Speaker 2: in June of twenty twenty two, just two weeks before
Speaker 2: he was scheduled to stand trial. The agreement dropped most
Speaker 2: of the charges on the indictment, which is a pretty
Speaker 2: standard practice in a federal criminal case, so he was
Speaker 2: convicted only on the charges of attempted murder of US
Speaker 2: service members, provision and attempted provision of material support to terrorists,
Speaker 2: and illegal transmission of national defense information.
Speaker 1: Pursue it.
Speaker 2: To that plea agreement, he was sentenced to five hundred
Speaker 2: and forty months. That's forty five years in prison, assuming
Speaker 2: he maintains good behavior and doesn't commit any new offenses
Speaker 2: while incarcerated. The eighty five percent of that sentence that
Speaker 2: he'll end up serving is a little over thirty eight years.
Speaker 2: His scheduled release date is in November of twenty fifty eight.
Speaker 1: He'll be sixty years old.
Speaker 2: When entering his plea, he was asked and said that
Speaker 2: he understood that the terms of this agreement included a
Speaker 2: waiver of his right to appeal any sentence of five
Speaker 2: hundred and forty months or less, and he got five
Speaker 2: hundred and forty months. But in March of last year,
Speaker 2: just a few days after his sentencing, his attorneys filed
Speaker 2: an appeal asking for the case to be re sentenced,
Speaker 2: citing a particular comment the judge made in his remarks
Speaker 2: after pronouncing the sentence. The transcript of that hearing shows
Speaker 2: the judge's remarks were fairly lengthy, covering nearly twenty pages
Speaker 2: in the transcript. Judges usually offer some explanation of how
Speaker 2: they arrived at their decision at a sentencing hearing. Some
Speaker 2: are more succinct. Others enjoy waxing poetic about the nature
Speaker 2: of justice or their feelings about a defendant's actions. There's
Speaker 2: no jury in the room anymore, so judges can get
Speaker 2: a little wild with it at this stage. It can
Speaker 2: be kind of jarring to hear them drop the act
Speaker 2: and actually have a deeply personal opinion. And Judge Gregory
Speaker 2: Woods spoke at length. He explained, as judges often do,
Speaker 2: the legal framework for calculating a sentence and the factors
Speaker 2: that must be weighed. He summarized the facts of the
Speaker 2: case and its procedural history. He highlighted pieces of evidence
Speaker 2: that contributed to his decision. He referenced the mitigating factors
Speaker 2: presented by the defense and explained why he didn't agree
Speaker 2: with the defense's position that they warranted a downward departure.
Speaker 2: And none of this is unusual or even remarkable. But
Speaker 2: the appeal h just on the judge's use of the
Speaker 2: phrase Judeo Christian values.
Speaker 3: Mister Melzer's crimes were pugnant. He betrayed the United States
Speaker 3: of America. He betrayed the United States military. He targeted
Speaker 3: for murder his fellow soldiers. He worked to aid Jahadis terrorists. Also,
Speaker 3: he could achieve his nihilist goal of unreminding Judeo Christian
Speaker 3: values and rupturing civilized society.
Speaker 2: Of the Order of Nine Angles. Judge Woods said, the
Speaker 2: organization and mister Melzer opposed those Judeo Christian values because
Speaker 2: they are good for civilization. His crimes were committed in
Speaker 2: order to destroy civilization and look, to be honest, it
Speaker 2: probably would have been better if he had not said that,
Speaker 2: but it was a brief mention in a very lengthy
Speaker 2: monologue that also emphasized that the defendant was not charged
Speaker 2: or sentenced because of his beliefs, but for the actions
Speaker 2: motivated by those beliefs. That single statement wasn't the basis
Speaker 2: for the sentence. It was just a comment. But the
Speaker 2: appeal argues that those comments constitute a sufficient appearance of
Speaker 2: the sentence having been based on a constitutionally impermissible factor,
Speaker 2: such as the defendants race or religious beliefs. The government
Speaker 2: contends that not only had Melser waived his right to
Speaker 2: appeal the sentence and his attorneys failed to object to
Speaker 2: these comments when they were made, but the comments in
Speaker 2: question don't raise an issue of constitutionality. If anything, the
Speaker 2: judge was referring to the bias motivation for the crime,
Speaker 2: not a characteristic of the defendant. There's a difference between
Speaker 2: talking about a defendants race or a defendant's religion and
Speaker 2: talking about the defendant's racial or religious motivation for a
Speaker 2: I'm no judge, I'm not even a lawyer. I'm just
Speaker 2: an enthusiastic consumer of the law. But I don't think
Speaker 2: this appeal holds a lot of water. They're hoping to
Speaker 2: get the case resentenced so they can have a second
Speaker 2: shot at getting a sentence of fifteen years rather than
Speaker 2: the forty five years currently on the books. If you're
Speaker 2: listening to this, the day it came out oral argument
Speaker 2: in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals was yesterday, November six,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. The Second Circuit tends to be a
Speaker 2: little speedier than some, but I've given up trying to
Speaker 2: divine a court's timeline. It never works out. A final
Speaker 2: opinion in Melzer's appeal could come as quickly as a
Speaker 2: few weeks, but it's more likely we won't see an
Speaker 2: opinion filed for a couple of months. Leaving aside the
Speaker 2: comments at issue in the appeal, though, Judge Woods made
Speaker 2: it clear how he felt about Ethan Melzer's crimes and
Speaker 2: his aims that he regretted his actions, saying, in part,
Speaker 2: mister Melser now expresses remorse as he is facing justice
Speaker 2: for his crimes, but I frankly do not believe him.
Speaker 2: Part of the methodology of his organization, as I understand it,
Speaker 2: is that one should hide one's true intentions and commitment
Speaker 2: to better achieve its goals, and over an extended period
Speaker 2: of time, mister Melser effectively did just that. So I
Speaker 2: do not trust his expression of remorse or that he
Speaker 2: has truly renounced his commitment to violence. I hope it's true, but.
Speaker 1: I don't trust it.
Speaker 2: I think it is more likely that mister Melser is
Speaker 2: playing another role to obtain leniency from the court, as
Speaker 2: he played soldier while working in secret to murder servicemen.
Speaker 2: So maybe the role of contrite federal prisoner is just
Speaker 2: another mask. Either way, he is going to be behind
Speaker 2: bars for a long time and he probably won't come
Speaker 2: out a better man whenever that day comes. Sentencing is
Speaker 2: meant to balance the need for punishment, rehabilitation, protection of
Speaker 2: the public, and deterrence. But based on the comments made
Speaker 2: at sentencing and the length of the sentence, this seems
Speaker 2: to be almost entirely in the service of deterrence. This
Speaker 2: isn't about preventing Ethan Melzer from doing this again. He
Speaker 2: couldn't do this again. It's about sending a message to
Speaker 2: everyone else who is considering joining the US military as
Speaker 2: part of their plan to reinvent the world through bloodshed
Speaker 2: with violent revolution and mass murder. But you have to
Speaker 2: ask yourself if there's a more effective way to address
Speaker 2: this underlying issue of young men enlisting in the military
Speaker 2: because they dream of a race war this can't be
Speaker 2: the only option. Ethan Melzer is currently being held at
Speaker 2: FCI Marion, a medium security federal prison in Illinois that
Speaker 2: I most strongly associate with being the place where a
Speaker 2: man aptly nicknamed a crying Nazi befriended a man that
Speaker 2: they call the Merchant of Death. But maybe now's not
Speaker 2: the time to tell you about how a guy who
Speaker 2: used to really publicly fantasize about raping me used to
Speaker 2: watch Tucker Carlson every night in the prison wreck room
Speaker 2: with the Russian arms dealer that Vladimir Putin traded Brittany
Speaker 2: Griner for another time.
Speaker 1: Perhaps.
Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and reported by me, Molly Coner.
Speaker 2: Our executive produces are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The
Speaker 2: theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
Speaker 2: me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com,
Speaker 2: but I probably will not answer it. You can exchange
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on the
Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys subreddit. Please don't post anything that will
Speaker 2: make you one of my weird little guys.